Google Earth! Wow! Check it out!

[JETninja 0]

Maybe old news to a few of you, I search back a ways and saw nothing about it. And nothing about it in the scenery guide! A free download, Google Earth takes the images from many satelite databases, with terrain information, and tons of options to show borders, streets, AIRPORTS, and much much more. You can Zoom from Space to 76 feet above the ground! You can tilt, rotate, move in any direction. The images vary in detail depending on the date and Sat used. (it shows my house from a year ago, before I redid the concrete of my pool...so its green! Ha Ha. Can see the wife Minvan in the driveway too) So how can it help in Scenery design? Object placement more then anything. It shows airports (and cities!) down to the local small field level including historical ones and heliports. Taking into account that the image may be a year old, you have Buildings, Trees, Towers, you name it. 3D Terrain and Buildings too! Incredible detail in most cases. And its WORLD WIDE!!!!Go here to download it: http://earth.google.com/ (even a Mac version)Download and install, look through all the options and check the ones that you want. It's an amazing program, and I think it would be invaluble to scenery design of modern day airports, scenery. Take some time to play with it, its very powerful and fun too! When you have airports selected, just find an icon on one and double click, it will take you down to it automatically. Use the tilt and rotate features to check out approches and all the scenery.PS, theres even an FS app, "Flips" that can show your flight plan routes in 3D on the globe! How cool!

[mgh 89]

It may be free to download but it's copyright and there are limitations on the use you can make of it. Check the the legal bit!

[arno 1]

The legal bit indeed says that you can not use it as textures for a scenery. Maybe you can use it on your own PC for the placement only, but distribution as textures is out of the question.

[scott967 62]

The colors generally suck, too plus no hard winter or night. But for placement it's OK, though I can get about the same for the US out of terraserver and no data restrictions.scott s..

[mgh 89]

No restictions? Have you read the Terraserver Conditions of Use?http://www.terraserver.com/aboutus/terms.asp

[Shaka 2]

If you are using it only for placement of FS objects, then that is fine. Obviously using it to make photoreal ground textures is not permitted. However, the thing to keep in mind is that Google disn't create this data - they licenced it form other sources. So, maybe you can go to those other sources, or another 3rd party source and licence it from them. Terraserver has other options available for people who need to reproduce the images over the internet, for example.And as other countries are becoming more computer-litterate, thier governments may licence the same data for redistribution the same way Google has. This is the case in Thailand where you can obtain data and licencing for various purposes for different types of data, for a fee (sat photos, landsat imagery, DEM, etc.). The Royal Thai Survey Department even has a plan to produce a tool similar to Google Earth that will incorporate other types of data as well. Of course it will be in Thai language (as well as English), but the data will be much less costly for Thai companys and individuals to licence than current options.- Martin

[JETninja 0]

I never said anything about using it for textures. Only for more accurate placement of objects. The detail is totally prevelant on the Sat used. In my local area, Catalina Island has no Field data at all, but San Louis Obisbo field is awesome! That's all! Find out the shapes and placement of buildings, trees, roads, rails, parking lots, etc.....if your lucky enough the field your working on has detail in google earth.Cheers!

[Guest luissa]

Hi,If you need a CALIBRATED background map for object/line/poly/... placement with Sbuilder or other tool, you can try this link:http://www.ptsim.com/sbuilder/gmaps.aspRegards, Luis

[N2056 33]

This is very cool...I've been working on a local airport and one of the things that I have struggled with is accurate building dimensions. I found a measuring tool in Google Earth which is fairly accurate. All you do is click between two points on the screen and it gives you the distance between the two points. Now I can GMAX my buildings with better accuracy. This will be most helpful...Thanks for the info!Robert